


Palely loitering

by Petra



Category: Promethean Age Series - Elizabeth Bear, Slings & Arrows
Genre: Abduction, Crossover, F/M, Fae & Fairies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-02-01
Updated: 2009-02-01
Packaged: 2018-07-18 19:46:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7328014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Petra/pseuds/Petra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Is this the part where I quote Mercutio and then you laugh at me?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Palely loitering

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Carla and Giglet for encouraging and making sure it's in proper English.

Possibly Geoffrey gets to Faerie by way of running away from the institution he ends up in when they decide he's gone off his rocker. Meandering off into the fog, through some barrier he might normally have noticed and avoided instinctively.

After some wandering, he fetches up outside a cabin, cold and clad in pathetic hospital pajamas.

The dark-haired woman who owns the cottage -- not being one to waste natural resources when they're standing outside looking attractive, bedraggled, and brilliant -- takes him in and gives him a good bath, during which he is half-asleep, and then a cup of coffee, not-exactly-black.

He eventually stops shaking and tries to work out where the hell he is. "Geoffrey Tennant," he says, in his best stage tones.

She smiles. "Morgan. Welcome."

Geoffrey looks around her modest, thoroughly rustic cabin, and his hand starts to shake again. "God, what have I strangled now?"

Morgan glances at his empty cup and takes it from him. "Nothing, to my knowledge. Why?"

Geoffrey wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. "One of my last clear memories -- before the sedatives -- was a swan." He mimes strangling it. "It's not as easy as it sounds, killing a swan."

"It doesn't sound easy at all," she says placatingly.

"Their wings --" he waves his hands in illustration. "The damn thing nearly knocked me out twice. Or --" he takes in her garments, really, for the first time. "Maybe it did and I'm having some sort of dream."

Morgan shakes her head. "No. Though you're quite a way from home."

"Am I?" He plucks at the homespun she gave him to wear. "So I'm not going to wake up in the back of the theatre and find out you were just Katie the wardrobe mistress and this is some sort of drug flashback?"

"No."

"Ah." Geoffrey rubs his eyes. "Is this the part where I quote Mercutio and then you laugh at me?"

"I'd rather you didn't call me Mab," Morgan says, her voice losing some of its mildness. "But I wouldn't laugh, exactly."

Geoffrey blinks at her and runs his hands through his damp hair. "Oh."

"Oh?"

"There are more things in heaven and earth?" he tries, hopefully.

"Neither of which you technically inhabit at the moment." Morgan smiles slightly in a most unreassuring way. "Pomegranate?"

He blanches. "No. Thank you."

She shakes her head. "It wouldn't make a difference at this juncture."

Geoffrey pats the top of his head and sighs, exaggeratedly, in relief. "Well, I don't look as much of an ass as I feel, at least."

Morgan chuckles. "If it would make you feel better --"

"No," he says quickly. "Not at all."

"You're far too pretty in your normal state for that to be an appealing thought," she says, and if it took her any longer to kiss him, she wouldn't be Morgan.

*

He doesn't think of leaving for days, due in part to lassitude -- going out of one's mind is almost as tiring as playing an incandescent Hamlet; performing soliloquies for one's paramour is impossible to refuse, however traumatic, and for fuck's sake she's a Queen; and as paramours go she's more demanding even than Ellen -- and in part to the simple fact that he wouldn't know which direction to start.

"Do you think they'd have me back if I came into the theatre tonight?" he asks, when he's starting to get his strength back.

"Perhaps," Morgan says, and kisses his forehead. "They'd be happier to have you yet if you could find an explanation for your absence."

"'I fell in love' doesn't begin to explain it," Geoffrey says, laughing at himself.

"Or if you brought them back some knowledge they don't have." Morgan is quiet for a deliberately long moment. "Something about the play that rides you so. Will said --"

And he hardly hears the end of the sentence, caught in its beginning, in the impossible familiarity of it and the absolute insanity that somehow, he's in the bed of a woman -- immortal, inhuman, perfect -- who knew Shakespeare.

It's one thing to speak of 'Will' with fondness based on his scripts, but 'Will said' is nothing anyone else could claim to quote.

"Oh," Geoffrey says, when she finishes, and pats his bare thighs as if he's looking for pockets. "Do you have a pen and paper?"

Morgan smiles and rises from the bed. "How will you convince anyone of your source?"

"I don't care if they believe a word of it." Geoffrey watches her as she finds pen, ink, paper. "You aren't lying to me, are you?"

"No. The truth is far more likely to serve my purposes."

Geoffrey takes the pen with shaking hands. "Then what does it matter if anyone else refuses to listen? I'll know it's true." 


End file.
